Would you be ok with the return of classes split by Faction?

The general consensus of the Vanilla crowd is they preferred it when Pallies were Alliance exclusive and Shaman was Horde exclusive. Toward the end of Vanilla's lifecycle some folks on both sides complained the Paladin/Shaman was too OP for the Alliance/Horde to stay faction exclusive and thus, the other side was given the Paladin/Shaman class in TBC. DKs and Monks were given to both factions in WotLk and MoP and of course, new Race/Class combinations were introduced in Cataclysm.

Pressing the reset button on Paladins and Shamen (and by that I mean making the Alliance/Horde exclusive again) probably wouldn't be a good idea at this point so I'll kick the question to future classes.

On second thought: What if the class names and class abilities of existing classes were changed based on their faction and race? After all we already have Heroism (Alliance) and Bloodlust (Horde).

In doing that, classes become diverse based on race and not faction. I'll leave balancing it to someone else but the lore's always been there and from a programming perspective it's doable with the existing technology.

Getting back to the original question I want to pose, though: Would you be ok with new classes being faction exclusive? Both factions would get a new class each but the other would never get it. For example The Alliance would get Shieldbearer (Melee DPS/Tank Hybrid) and the Horde would get Axebearer (Pure Melee DPS). Again, that last sentence is just for example purposes.

Originally Posted by Darsithis

World of Warcraft has been played by so many people that it's hard to get a reliable source of new players into the game. Add to that a toxic community that expects perfection out of people who have never played and you have a recipe for decline.

Originally Posted by Amry

Only one faction receiving something completely new? Absolutely not going to happen. The QQ is so massive it will break the QQ Pillar in the Elemental Plane of QQ and unleash Kiukiuwing, the Aspect of QQs.

It could be interesting. It just sort of depends on how Blizzard feels and how they'd execute it. I always thought it was more interesting when both factions had an exclusive class, although I can see the objective reasoning behind NOT doing that as well.

i loved the fact that shamans were horde only and paladins were alliance. i'd love to see it come back one day that the classes are faction only.
i guess i am one of the few that never complained about the other being op.

The general consensus of the Vanilla crowd is they preferred it when Pallies were Alliance exclusive and Shaman was Horde exclusive.

Ummm. Were you around back then? This is a prime example of a vocal minority. Almost everyone hated this in Vanilla after the unique and newness wore off after a month or two. By the time people really figured out that WoW was something that could really take off, it was immediately the consensus that shit like this would have to go asap.

With the fine-tuning of the different classes' specs these days (due to the homogenization of buffs and such) generally meaning that each spec is playable for a certain niche...

No. Unless they were mirror images of each other, there would be huge imbalance issues on a patch-by-patch basis.

The time when shamans and paladins were buff bots with 1 or 2 abilities while they all healed is long gone. (And crazy OP windfury procs... but that's the exception that proves the "they were healers" rule because the only reason Windfury was good was because it was when it was exploited in a brokenly OP manner)

Last edited by Confirm Deny; 2013-09-08 at 10:39 PM.
Reason: No I don't actually mean "exploited"

i see nothing wrong however with renaming classes by race to match lore (but they remain mechanically the same across factions/races)

I've been wanting them to do this for a while. Mostly with the tauren priests and paladins. Call them Seers and Sunwalkers like lore says they are. And troll priests should probably be Witch Doctors or some such. Draenei paladins should be Vindicators and Blood Elf paladins should be Blood Knights.

The main reason for opening Shaman and Paladins to both factions no longer applies, which is/was their buffs. But since all of those unique buffs are no longer unique or even in the game it doesn't matter any more.

(Did you know that Heroism was originally going to be a Paladin spell? That was Blizzard's initial solution to the Bloodlust problem)

I always thought it was good to have some classes unique to certain factions.

The general consensus of the Vanilla crowd is they preferred it when Pallies were Alliance exclusive and Shaman was Horde exclusive.

I have no idea why people still make blanket statements like this, when everyone reading knows there is no way for you to actually know if this is true or not. You probably don't even have enough information to make an educated guess as to the "general consensus".

Originally Posted by Aurabolt

Toward the end of Vanilla's lifecycle some folks on both sides complained the Paladin/Shaman was too OP for the Alliance/Horde to stay faction exclusive and thus, the other side was given the Paladin/Shaman class in TBC. DKs and Monks were given to both factions in WotLk and MoP and of course, new Race/Class combinations were introduced in Cataclysm.

This is not the reason this was changed, at all. The reason the faction exclusivity was removed was because it was impossible to keep the factions balanced without making the two classes exact copies of each other. It wasn't because people complained.

i see nothing wrong however with renaming classes by race to match lore (but they remain mechanically the same across factions/races)

They already do this with paladins, sunwalkers, and blood knights.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Netherspark

The main reason for opening Shaman and Paladins to both factions no longer applies, which is/was their buffs. But since all of those unique buffs are no longer unique or even in the game it doesn't matter any more.

(Did you know that Heroism was originally going to be a Paladin spell? That was Blizzard's initial solution to the Bloodlust problem)

I always thought it was good to have some classes unique to certain factions.

Like when you go to create a character it calls it a Sunwalker, or a Dark Ranger etc (with the overall class name in brackets maybe) and have you referred to by NPCs as "Dark Ranger" not just "hunter".